It will be evident that in essaying an effort which can at best end in only a plausible guess we must use every available clue. This means, not merely that we try to trace back the history of mirthful utterance, alike in the evolution of the individual and of the species, to its rude inchoate forms, but that we search for vestiges of utterances vaguely resembling human laughter in the animal world.
This last suggestion may well seem to the reader like another blow to man’s early pride of race. The worthy naturalist who called his species the “laughing animal” did not probably trouble himself about the question of the dignity of the attribute. Since laughing was one of the things that only man could do, it served as a convenient way of describing him. Yet, since the later evolutional psychology has led us to be more generous in recognising in the lower animals something closely similar to our own processes of reasoning, we need not be greatly shocked to hear that it is actually crediting other species than our own with a simple sense of fun, and a characteristic manner of expressing the feeling; that is to say, an utterance answering to our laugh.
Now here, if anywhere, we must be on our guard. In attempting to detect traces of mirthful expression in animals we are exposed to a two-fold danger: that common to all observation of animal ways—a too anthropomorphic kind of interpretation; and that of mistaking in other beings, {157} whether human or sub-human, what we envisage as funny, for their conscious fun. It is eminently natural, when we do not screw ourselves up to the severely scientific attitude, to see signs of chuckling glee in animals. I remember how I watched somewhere in Norway, in the early morning, a magpie as he stood for some time ducking his head and throwing up his long tail, accompanying these movements with chuckle-like sounds; and how I found it exceedingly hard not to believe that he was having a good laugh at something, possibly the absurd ways of the foreign tourists who visit his coast. Yet, judged by the standard of scientific observation, this “natural” interpretation was scarcely satisfactory.
Since our aim compels us to be scientific, we cannot accept common modes of interpreting the “mischievous” performances of animals. Many of a monkey’s tricks are “funny” enough; yet we may seriously doubt whether he enjoys them as practical jokes. His solemn mien certainly does not suggest it; but then it may be said that human jokers have a way of keeping up an appearance of gravity. A consideration of greater weight is that what looks to us much like a merry joke may be a display of the teasing instinct, when this goes beyond the playful limit, and aims at real annoyance or mischief. The remark probably applies to some of the well-known stories of “animal humour,” for example, that of Charles Dickens about the raven. This bird, it may be remembered, had to share the garden with a captive eagle. Having carefully measured the length of this formidable creature’s chain, he turned to good account the occasion of the giant’s sleep by stealing his dinner; and then, the rightful owner having presumably woke up, made an impudent display of eating the same just safely outside the {158} eagle’s “sphere of influence”. This doubtless showed some cunning, and something of spite; but it is not clear that it indicated an enjoyment of the fun of the thing.
That this teasing and playing of tricks by animals may now and again approach the human attitude of malicious mirthfulness is not improbable. A cat that “plays” with its captive mouse, half-pretending, as it seems, not to see the small thing’s hopeless attempt to “bolt,” may, perhaps, be enjoying something of the exultant chuckle of a human victor. So, too, some of the mischievous behaviour of a lively and imperfectly domesticated monkey, which a simple-minded sailor has brought to his mother by way of making her happy, may disclose a germ of the spirit of fun, of a malicious playfulness which is capable of enjoying its jokes as such.
Yet, while we may question the truth of the proposition that these mischievous actions are enjoyed as practical jokes—in the way in which Uncle Remus represents them—we need not hesitate to attribute to animals a simple form of the child’s sense of fun. This trait appears most plainly in the pastimes of the young of many familiar species, including our two domestic pets, pastimes which are quite correctly described as animal play. The particular forms of this playful activity, the tusslings, the attacks and retreats on both sides, the chasings and the rest, are pretty certainly determined by special instincts.[89] But, as play, these actions are an expression of high spirits and of something analogous to a child’s love of “pretending”. Is it not a bit of playful make-believe, for example, when a dog, on seeing the approach of a canine stranger, “lies low” wearing the look of an alert foe; yet, as soon as the stranger approaches, “gives {159} away the show” by entering with an almost disgraceful celerity into perfectly friendly relations with him? It is the same when a dog teases another dog by startling him, showing signs of enjoying the trick. H. M. Stanley writes: “My dog took the same delight in coming up quietly behind a small dog and giving a terrifying bark as does the child in jumping out from a corner and crying ‘boo’”.[90]
Owing, to no little extent, perhaps, to the fact of its education by man, the dog gives much the clearest indications of a sense of fun. No one can observe a dog during a walk with his child-comrades without noting how readily he falls in with their playful proposals. The infectiousness of an announcement of the playful temper is clearly illustrated here. The dog imitates the gambols, and will even seem to respond to the vocal outbursts of his merry playmates. Darwin has rightly recognised a germ of our “sense of humour” in a dog’s joining in the game of stick-throwing. You throw a bit of stick for him to fetch, and having picked it up he proceeds to carry it away some distance and to squat down with it on the ground just before him. You then come quite close as if to take the stick from him, on which he seizes it and bears it off exultingly, repeating the little make-believe with evident enjoyment.[91]
I have tested a dog again and again when playing with him in this fashion, and have satisfied myself that he is in the play-mood, and knows perfectly well that you are too; so that if you pretend to be serious and to command him in your most magisterial voice to give up the stick he sidles up with a hollow show of obedience which could impose on nobody, as if to say, “I know better: you are not really serious; so I am going on with the game”. All {160} the notes of a true sense of fun seem to be present in this case: the gay and festive mood, a firm resolve desipere in loco, and a strong inclination to play at “pretending”.
Prof. Lloyd Morgan gives an example of what certainly looks like a dog’s merry make-believe in which man’s lead takes no part. The writer tells us that he used at one time to take an intelligent retriever to a sandy shore, where the dog engaged spontaneously in the following pastime. He buried a number of small crabs in the sand, and then stood waiting till a leg or a claw appeared, “upon which he would run backwards and forwards giving short barks of keen enjoyment”.[92]
I find it hard to doubt that this was a genuine outburst of joyousness and of something indistinguishable from a love of fun, and that it was connected with the “coming off” of a practical joke. The repetitions of the burial when the dog had seen that it was ineffectual, points clearly to a consciousness of the make-believe character of the performance.